Childless households and relative income poverty outcomes: a cross-country comparison

A large body of research on income poverty has placed households with children at the centre stage. Childless households, however, have received far less attention despite their growing share of the population and rising poverty risks, particularly among singles (Alm et al., 2020; Brady & Parolin, 2020; Edmiston et al., 2025; Gornick et al., 2024; Kreyenfeld & Konietzka, 2017; Parolin, Desmond & Wimer, 2023).

This emphasis on households with children is understandable: children are more vulnerable to poverty (Minujin et al., 2006), and child poverty has long-term consequences on individual development (Cooper & Stewart, 2020). Moreover, high poverty rates among single parents have reasonably drawn sustained attention towards this specific demographic (Brady & Burroway, 2012; Maldonado & Nieuwenhuis, 2015; Van Lancker et al, 2015). Equally important, however, social policy research has focused on this group because an increasing number of anti-poverty measures specifically target households with children (Ferragina & Seeleib-Kaiser, 2014; Frericks & Gurìn, 2023; Morgan, 2013; Thévenon, 2011). Still, this emphasis has often obscured the limited support available to childless households and how these policies may increase inequalities between households with and without children (...)